“How sure are you?” the FBI agent asked Barbara Rae-Venter. “As long as we have all the descendants in the family tree, then I’m sure,” the retired intellectual property attorney and genetic genealogist told him. About a week later, on April 25, Joseph DeAngelo was arrested; he has since been charged with 13 counts of…

Neil Simon, whose comic touch in “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park” and many other hits on stage and screen made him the most commercially successfully playwright of the 20th century — and perhaps of all time — has died, according to his representative. He was 91. From “Come Blow Your Horn”…

Australian Lachie Lansdown, 22, was so physically spent after winning the Catalina Classic on Sunday that the muscles in his shoulders and chest would not stop twitching after the race. His muscles twitched and his body shook so much while giving an interview almost 20 minutes after the race that it looked like he was…

Surfer Kieren McCarthy, right, and her team “Shred Some Gnar” prepare to compete as teams of one San Clemente lifeguard and three junior guards get together for a surf contest Sunday, Aug. 26, at the San Clemente pier. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer) Lifeguard Sean Staudenbaur high fives his teammate Sophie LeBourgeois as teams…

FULLERTON – Officers confiscated a .22 caliber Beretta handgun during a routine traffic stop in Fullerton from a motorist who had been previously arrested for the same offense, police said Sunday, Aug. 26. Officers pulled over a black GMC Denali at 7:05 p.m. Saturday in the 2600 block of West Orangethorpe Avenue for vehicle code…

NEW YORK — Tributes are pouring in from actors, fellow playwrights and other celebrities for Neil Simon, the American theater’s most successful and prolific playwright in the second half of the 20th century. Simon, whose Broadway classics include such comedies as “The Odd Couple” and “The Sunshine Boys,” died Sunday at age 91. Here are…

The California bullet train project has cost state taxpayers an average $3.1 million a day over the last year — a construction spending rate higher than that for the Bay Bridge, Boston’s Big Dig or any U.S. transportation project in recent history But still it’s not enough, planners say. In order…

A man, woman and juvenile were arrested and $3,000 in stolen goods and cash were recovered from a Cerritos home after detectives witnessed a “knock-knock” burglary, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department announced on Saturday, Aug. 25. During their interrogation, the suspects admitted to the burglary and implicated themselves in recent La Palma and Buena Park-area…

NEW YORK — Playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose laugh-filled hits such as “The Odd Couple,” ″Barefoot in the Park” and his “Brighton Beach” trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died. He was 91. Simon died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia surrounded by family at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, said…

While California wages started the year rising at the nation’s fifth-fastest pace, according to one measure, Southern California pay hikes lag. The continued modest pay advances — as job growth stays strong with unemployment running at cyclical lows — is a bit of an economic puzzle. Are bosses still penny-pinching with salary or are most…